New Catholic’s Holy Week ritual was a sign of sacrifice, unity

The cross is our symbol, and if there are people out there who would see a bunch of adults and children carrying a cross, what does it mean to them?”

Dr. Randy Miller DVM

Take up your cross

A newly-initiated parishioner and fellow Christians carried a heavy cross at dawn each morning of Holy Week to remember Christ’s sacrifice in unity.

SCROLL THE ARROWS to see more photos. 

Dr. Randy Miller DVM has stood at many crossroads along the road to closer communion with Christ.

None was ever quite like this. 

Each morning of Holy Week this year, he and an interchurch group of early-risers carried a 90-pound wooden cross across the Long Branch Reservoir Dam in Macon County, taking turns bearing the load for the Lord.

“My goal was to help create some unity,” said Dr. Miller, a member of Immaculate Conception Parish in Macon, who with his two children were received into full communion with the Catholic Church this year at the Easter Vigil.

“I am taking a big step into Catholicism,” he said. “But I don’t want to neglect the people I have admired and love in my Protestant upbringing.”

Dr. Miller, who operates several veterinary clinics from Columbia to Kirksville, was baptized into the Catholic Church as a baby, but his parents did not bring him up Catholic.

He’s been a member of several Christian faith communities, meeting great friends and drawing closer to God.

But he never found the healing he was looking for.

“I thought faith was about a personal relationship between God and me, so church didn’t seem all that necessary,” he recalled. 

His wife, Martina, was raised Catholic but had stopped participating.

Dr. Miller is grateful that they decided to enroll their children in Immaculate Conception School in Macon.

“That got me going to Mass,” he said. “And to be honest with you, it just clicked with me.”

He was taken with the reverence of the Catholic Liturgy. 

“It’s what I think worship is supposed to look like,” he said.

Also appealing to him was the principled, but pastoral way the Church engages with the rest of the world — maintaining dialogue, accompanying, offering mercy but upholding objective truth.

He came to appreciate the seriousness and sacredness of the Sacraments.

“I’m a believer in the Eucharist!” he said. “I really don’t understand how the world went away from what communion was obviously meant to be.” 

As soon as Mrs. Miller saw how her husband was being drawn to God through the Church, “she stepped right back into the faith like she’d never even left.” 

Dr. Miller had spent years searching for timeless truth and the spark that would set his soul aflame.

“And I found it!” he said. “And it was the place that I had spent a lot of my young adulthood frowning upon. Isn’t that how it works?” 

The Millers and their children were received into full communion with the Church this year at Easter.

“The wrong enemy” 

Dr. Miller knows a lot of people and isn’t afraid to talk about his faith with anyone who wants to hear about it.

“And throughout this Catholic journey I’ve been on, I’ve had to explain a lot about the faith and even argue with some Christian friends,” he said.

Many were raised with the same anti-Catholic biases he had once embraced.

“I’m afraid a lot of Christians in this country have picked the wrong enemy,” Dr. Miller stated. “It’s the devil, not the Church down the road.” 

All of this was weighing heavily on him this Palm Sunday during the reading of the Lord’s Passion at Mass.

He recalled having taken part in a stirring Stations of the Cross service during a Cursillo weekend.

“I had never really taken Christ’s Passion and all that he went through very seriously before that,” he recalled.

Dr. Miller noted that the Lord did many wonderful and miraculous things when he was here in the flesh, “but a lot of what he did, we can’t really relate to because we’re not perfect like he is.”

One experience all humans can relate to is pain.

“So, it’s important for us to reflect on the suffering he went through for us, especially during Holy Week,” he said.

Weight of the wood 

Dr. Miller talked to a friend who has a woodworking shop. They agreed to fashion a sufficiently sacrificial cross. 

“We’re gonna’ make a big cross that’s heavy!” said Dr. Miller.

He went to his father-in-law’s farm and picked up some 6-by-6 posts and looked up how large Jesus’s cross was.

“About an hour later, we had a cross that looked battered, but we smoothed up the edges so no one would get a splinter,” he said.

Ten feet long, six feet wide and very heavy.

Cross completed, Dr. Miller sent messages to people all over town, inviting them to help him carry it over the dam the following morning.

“I wrote on Facebook that this cross is heavy, but Christ’s cross and sacrifice was much larger,” he said.

There’d be plenty of time to make the mile-and-a-half walk and still be on time to work or school.

“I think we had 15 people there the first day, and then it kept building to 30, then 45, then 60 and about 65 on Holy Saturday,” said Dr. Miller. 

He and other participants led prayers, read Scripture passages and gave a short meditation each day before taking up the cross.

“We had people — grown people — with tears in their eyes over it,” said Dr. Miller.

The sunrise over the water was spectacular as adults and children from many faith communities clung to that new rugged cross.

There were no divisions.

“Just Christian people getting together and reflecting on Christ’s passion,” said Dr. Miller. “The cross is our symbol, and if there are people out there who would see a bunch of adults and children carrying a cross, what does it mean to them?”

Sunrise service 

Newly confirmed and nourished with the Holy Eucharist, Dr. Miller said he’s on fire for the faith.

“I’ve got this yearning to bring people together in unity, to keep the Easter fire burning and find ways for all of us to help people in need, together,” he said.

“It doesn’t have to be a Catholic fix,” he stated. “But it does need to be a Christ fix.” 

He’s confident that the Holy Week carrying of the cross will become an annual event.

He doesn’t expect one event to cure all the negative feelings among separated Christians, “but I think this was a step for some people.”

“The differences we have are important, but not as important as understanding the evangelical tasks that we’ve all been given,” he said.

“I think we could all do better.”